Full Brain Films is looking for screenwriters and illustrators to join an informal meet and greet on November 14, 2014 to discuss the possibility of a professional collaboration on our new web series, Exceptionals, http://exceptionalsseries.com

We’re looking for experienced screenwriters who write in the genres of drama, super-hero, science fiction, friend-relationship stories and thrillers. Strong female characters are the core of this series, so women writers are our priority here. We are also looking for illustrators for paid work creating black and white graphic novel versions of a few of the screenplays.

During this gathering, you’ll be able to meet some of the lead actors and crew in the series and a few of the other local writers with whom we’ve been fortunate to connect. Food will be provided and you can bring your favorite beverage.

This will be by invitation only – space is limited. Please let me know about your experience and any connection to or interest in our series concept. Don’t worry — this isn’t an interview! We’re just looking for experienced screenwriters who like the topic and would be interested in collaborating with a great cast and crew. For now, this gathering is just to discuss the idea in a casual, informal setting.

More about Exceptionals

Exceptionals is a web series about normal people who learn they have extraordinary powers and the complications those powers bring to their lives. This genre is super-hero realism, which is drama and it includes sci-fi and action elements.

The super powers aren’t supernatural. They are often subtle and have biological and/or physical explanations, albeit extreme biology and physics. Most of the characters have mental powers, like telepathy, some have physical powers. There is a downside to all the powers, and much of the drama revolves around how the characters attempt to minimize the deficits and maximize the benefits of the abilities. Many of the abilities are life-threatening.

We independently produced the first four episodes, collectively called Part 1: Future Certain, which are about the first Exceptional, Brynne Vaness. We are in the process of editing these. We are also producing Sneak Previews (like trailers) for Parts 2, 3 and 4 — we’re filming “moments” in those that will give people a sense of where the series is going. Our goal is to get investment or distribution to continue the series.

“Up to this point, I’ve been the primary writer and I’ve written all the characters and plot ideas. Moving forward, and considering the length of each episode, and the likelihood we’d have to produce up to 16 episodes each season, I’ll need a team to help me.

This is why I’m reaching out to Portland writers, particularly women writers — you may have read that part of our goal with this series is to highlight women in front of the camera and behind. Other than this making us different than most super-hero shows, this just makes good business sense. There are amazing women actors in Portland and they are under-utilized — I have worked with many and we have some incredible talent in this show already — and having women pen their dialogue is vital.

There’s also an untapped market for shows that follow the non-romantic stories of women. For example, there is no discussion in the first four episodes about Brynne’s love interests. The dialogue revolves around ethical and moral dilemmas Brynne faces. I’m not opposed to including love-relationship stories as the series continues, but I find that the friendship-relationship and work-relationship stories are extremely compelling and not explored as much in women-centric shows.

So, my goal now is to find a compatible team of writers in the Portland area who can brainstorm some ideas within the limits of the broad outlines I’ve established (which I’ll explain when we meet). There will be a need to create more characters and new plot ideas. I have an outline for 7 seasons, but the specifics will have to be figured out.”

Genre

Sub-Genres

Tagline (if indie produced)

Tagline (short)

Tagline (alternate)

He hides in the beginning. She races toward the ending. In their story, nothing is ever as it seems.

Tagline (Poe referenced)

A darkly romantic tale inspired by the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.

Synopsis (short)

Inspired by the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Carinne’s Story is a dark romantic story within a story.

As writing instructor David Parker becomes captivated by Carinne, his most gifted student, they become each other’s muses, and enter into a relationship that unfolds like their dark writing. But true to their stories, it’s a relationship that cannot last.

Synopsis (prose and poetry)

David is a writing professor with a tragic life narrative. Stuck in a lonely existence, with no faith for a happy ending, his days are endless reruns. Until Carinne, that is–a woman fascinated with history and an even greater obsession with endings. As romance develops between them, their stories intertwine and their plots thicken. Will love be strong enough to overcome the tides of fate that seem chosen for them? Or are their destinies completely out of their hands?

Content

Adult situations

Characters

Carinne

She is a woman, 25 to 35, and a writing student who has become attracted to her writing instructor, David. She is a gifted writer who tends toward dark material drawn from her past — she’s an orphan who was in and out of foster homes as a child until she finally ran away.

She suffers from bi-polar disorder and has medication. She knows that the medication dulls her senses and adversely affects her ability to write, so she stops taking it.

David

He is a man in his 40s who is a popular writing instructor at a local community college. Outside of his professional world, he is very much living a solitary life. He suffers with depression and attention deficit disorder which leave him isolated from others and without the ability to complete his own stories. He has difficulty being in crowds: ironic for a person who’s profession is teaching.

He’s also very lonely and when Carinne comes into his life, he is swept away by her vibrant personality and brilliant prose.

Wendy

She is a woman in her 40s and a colleague in David’s writing department. She likes David very much, but finds him difficult to get to know. She is also very competitve with David in their professional relationship. She’s the level-headed friend with whom David shares his problems.

Current Status

Context

Genre

Drama

Sub-Genres

Erotic, Feminist, Gay/Lesbian

Tagline

Two couples. One love.

Tagline (with title)

It’s about sex. It’s about love. Well, it is and it isn’t.

Synopsis (short)

Amy and Marty are having an affair. Their spouses, Dera and Ben, are also having an affair — with each other. When their secret relationships are exposed and their complicated double affairs become an even more complicated four-way relationship, Amy gets increasingly confused. She wonders if it’s possible to be in love with more than one person at the same time. She eventually learns the complicated truth: it is and it isn’t.

Synopsis (descriptive, short)

An affair and the retribution that follows leads two couples to examine their relationships and embark on an alternative, polyamorous relationship. As the four-way relationship unfolds, the lines between sex and love become blurred, and the balance becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

Synopsis (marketing, short)

Amy wants Marty. Dera wants Ben. Amy is married to Ben. Dera is married to Marty. So the solution: they swap. But now Dera wants Amy and Ben wants Marty. Some of them are in it for sex, but some of them are in it for love… sometimes. It is about sex and it is about love. Well, it is and it isn’t.

Content

Characters (lead)

Amy

She is a woman in her 40s who has been married to Ben for several years. They do not have children. They live in a nice apartment in an upscale building in Portland. She is a professional woman and works as a manager at an unnamed office in Portland.

For the first time in her marriage, Amy has become attracted to another man, Marty, and while Ben has been away on several lengthy trips, she’s been spending time with Marty. And she’s been feeling very guilty about how she’s feeling, but she isn’t stopping.

Amy is in a state of sexual dormancy (which might seem like naivete on the surface) at the beginning of the story. Her and Ben have been stuck in a routine and her affair with Marty is a way to break out of that. The affair, and its consequences, move Amy from sexual dormancy into sexual awakening, and then into two different alternative relationships.

Amy’s emotional journey is the core of this story.

Dera

She is a woman in her late 30s who has been married to Marty for a few years. They do not have children. She is a freelance marketer who works long hours. Her work schedule has become difficult to coordinate with Marty’s. Their relationship has become strained.
When she discovers that Marty is having an affair, she decides not to confront him, but instead, confront the other woman.

Dera provides the counter-point to Amy. Dera is very willing to embrace the alternative relationships, and is the first to take advantage of the sexual experimentation this provides.

Themes by Greg Kerr

Polyamory and Sex

It Is and It Isn’t is based on two true stories about couples who engage in alternative lifestyles and relationships. These types of polyamorous lifestyles have often been explored (mostly indirectly) in fictional films, and almost always in the context of religious beliefs, as an oddity, or for sexual exploitation. This script deviates from the norm in two fundamental ways.

First, it doesn’t portray polyamorous lifestyles as that far out of the norm — scratch the surface of many relationships, and you’ll see a desire or an active interest in these lifestyles.

Second, although this is very much an erotic story, the eroticism comes from what we don’t see and hear. There is no nudity and little profanity, although it’s very clear what is happening out-of-the-shot. Movies that show the graphic sex lose most of their audience because they either offend or they disregard the nature of erotic fantasies: fantasies can only exist in the imagination and not in reality. Nothing extinguishes the fantasy faster than replacing a thought about what it might be like with the actual sight of what it is like. True, enduring fantasies are about the possibility of what might happen.

When the actors vividly describe what’s happened, or we see or hear them reacting to what’s happening, but not in the whole context, our imaginations fill in the details with much more elaborate and personal fantasies. If you want to see sex, there’s plenty of porn on the Internet. If you want to be titillated, see a well-crafted, well-acted erotic story that allows the audience to become personally involved in the fantasy.

Moral Ambiguity

There is no good and bad, right and wrong discussed here. The characters acknowledge that their polyamorous relationship is potentially scandalous, however, that doesn’t impede their interest in exploring it.

Most of the characters I write aren’t black and white types. Black and white characters, for the most part, don’t really exist in the real world (although fanatics and irrationalists try to push extreme ideas, they are very much in the minority). Competing objectives are what drive our perception that some people are good or bad — if we can agree with their motives and methods, then we sympathize. It’s very easy to sympathize with both Amy and Dera in the script, though not at the same time, and often not in the same scene.

Moral ambiguity is very thought-provoking. The situations that Amy and Dera go through and the ambiguity that surrounds their competing motivations will give audiences plenty to discuss after the movie with both women having their supporters and detractors switching sides.

Parallelism

I frequently write scripts and stories that contrast two similar characters who have different, competing motivations — it’s almost like seeing a mirror image of the other. I often put these two characters in the same dilemma so the audience can get two views of how each of them handle that scenario.

I love to explore competing facets of human behavior. To that end, I’ve often written two different characters in two different scenes in the same script, each of the characters having the same movements, same dilemma, or in some cases, the exact same lines of dialogue as the other, then letting the scenes evolve differently based on the character’s objectives.

Power/Cultural Relationships

In my writing, I often explore alternative power/cultural relationships from the perspective of different characters, and those relationships will change over the course of the script. In It Is and It Isn’t, the following relationships are explored:

Award-winning writer, director and producer of the multiple award-winning independent feature Unremembered (2009), Greg Kerr has been writing and directing films since he was 11 years old, having premiered his first 3-minute film extravaganza (from an 8mm reel) in his living room.

And he’s not just creative. Greg also brings business management, budgeting and marketing skills to the Full Brain team.

A native Oregonian, Greg has lived in Portland since 2000. He has a Master’s degree in writing and marketing from Portland State University and a Bachelor’s degree in history with an emphasis in ancient civilizations from Northern Arizona University. By day (and evenings … and weekends), Greg teaches Web design and content writing classes at Portland Community College, reserving the summers for filmmaking.

A ten minute long, chance encounter between a woman and a man profoundly alters their lives as they share their darkest secrets. This is a new, short film by Full Brain Films. It stars Karla Mason, and was written and directed by Greg Kerr with production design and assistant direction by Wendy Peyton. Nan Avant provided the score for this film. More information will be posted soon about venues the film will show in.

Winner of three best film awards

Unremembered (Indie Fest and Accolade award winner, feature film) is a complex thriller told in non-linear time about a man who has no past. This independent sci fi film follows the alternate reality journey of John Outis (Tim Delaney, Indie Fest award winner, lead actor) over sixteen days as he tries to restore his fractured life history. But the more his dark past comes into focus, the more the lives of his friends, his wife, and his lover are altered.

As his past threatens to end his future, he turns to Tina Plantes (Karla Mason), a brilliant and unconventional physics professor. Drawn deeper into the bizarre events of John’s life, she discovers a disturbing and far-reaching set of truths about dreams, time, and the power of the human will.

Unremembered is a “sinuous and riveting independent film in the tradition of David Lynch” declares A.G. Nigrin, Executive Director, The Rutgers Film Co-op/ New Jersey Media Arts Center.

Unremembered was made in Portland, Oregon by Greg Kerr for less than $32,000. It features Portland talent with original music by Nan Avant.

Greg Kerr also wrote the screenplay which earned an Indie Fest award for original screenplay.